Interesting vinyl/Cd article

I would have guessed 40 million CD sales last year. Weren't they already at 19 million at the halfway point?

I'm sad to see the demise of CDs, but I think their decline has been accelerated by cars no longer even having the option for a CD player.

I just hope that it can at least survive as a niche thing that I can order on Amazon. I already bought a 2020 album on CD, and it cost only $4 for the preorder!

 

Probably nothing. Though, I doubt the unlimited music for $10 per month will last forever.

 

I have nothing against vinyl, but I don't think it's going to lead to a massive physical revival. It seem that it's growing much slower than CDs' decline.

 

In about 6-7 years teenagers will think it's cool to buy cds

 

The problem with CDs is that they don't have the intentional retro factor that vinyls and cassetted have. They've been around for so long (and were selling very well until the mid 2010s) that they're seen more as a slightly outdated thing. While people hype up vinyl because it's "warm".

I'm pretty young myself, though not a teen. And I will keep buying new CDs as long as I can.

 

Ah. Actual data. Always the enemy of a good story.

 

Something we cannot even imagine today.

 

The slow removal of car CD players, plus the lack of retailers selling them + even local libraries slowly removing them as an option. With optical drives themselves becoming extinct at the same time. When the average consumer has no way to play back a CD anymore, there's no reason to buy new ones.

I do think it will survive as a niche format, though. Jazz / Classical / Classic rock titles I suspect aren't going anywhere soon.

 

This is not how nostalgia is created. Of course CD's don't have an "intentional retro factor", they're not retro..... yet. When Vinyl went away it was the CD of its day, no-one really cared very much. It was a changing trend. That is beginning to happen to CD now. It'll be a good few years before they become retro - usually 20 to 25 years after they go (mostly) go bye-bye.

I wonder. I'll take a stab.... storage capacity will get so large, and conversely it's physical size will get so small, that you'll be able to have every recording of the 20th century on one cheap disc. You won't need the net at all. you'll plug it into a port that was inserted in the palm of your left hand as a child and have access forever. In the right palm is a similar port where you put the chip for every book ever published.

 

There needs to be a way for a company to make money, keep in mind. BrainPal DRM?

 

Licensed at birth as a benevolent gift from the government who want to keep you from starting wars.

 

The removal from cars was very quick, actually. They were wiped out from 2017 to 2019.
And you can't even put a CD player in the new cars, since the infotainment system is so tied to the functionality of the car.

 

There are still options in 2020, just diminished.

But good point on after-market....when the console has required hardware for the car to actually function, there's really no way to replace that I would suspect. I've stated this in other threads but a CD player in a new car, for me, is very low on the priority list....if it's there then I'll just take it as an added perk.

 

Good article, but one of the most important things was said in the comments section:

I wonder what kind of ripple effect that might have if one of the big 3 is making pretty big changes to how their reissue department is organized.

 

I've read market research that says vinyl buyers are actually more likely to subscribe to a streaming service than non-vinyl buyers, more likely to follow their favorite bands on social media, etc. I haven't seen similar research on CD buyers. My guess is the opposite would be true. Certainly we know vinyl buyers are willing to pay a higher price point per album, reversing decades of the CD being the more expensive format.

I'd also suspect that CD is the music format of choice for the non-internet-savvy. If so, it would seem to be a real problem that increasingly the only way to buy them is online!

Maybe these assumptions are wrong, however. Would love to see any actual data that exists.

 

There is no way on god's grey earth I'm ever going to fork over a huge amount of money to get the sound of the stylus in the vinyl out of the music -- and then pay huge amounts for a slab of plastic I have to baby.

 

The grey mis-type actually fits in perfectly with your comments. Nicely done.

Makes me think of this

 

I don't even have a car at the moment. But if I had to buy a new car, I'd have to live with it not having a CD player (even though I'd really like one)

I don't think there's necessarily a correlation between CDs and internet savvy-ness, unless you're talking about people over the age of 60.

Personally, I'm young and I use spotify for when I'm out, but I buy a new CD every month. I may eventually stop streaming if I get a new laptop with a bigger hard drive.

 

CDS + Vinyl
It’s the big Anniversary box deal now.
Record labels are looking for a hundred bucks or more from the consumer that’s where the big money is these days.

 

Years ago, I read an article that said you needed to sell 5,000 CDs to stay in print. I'm sure the figure is lower today through better supply management and manufactured on demand discs. However, I suspect some new releases go OOP rather quickly.

 

Yeah, if you want to make money, just get a baby boomer to buy a product they already bought several times before.

 

Remember as well that a reasonable percentage of the new vinyl sold is down to the contrived limited editions that record companies churn out. Be it new releases or record store day re-releases.

Some albums are released in multiple different coloured vinyl editions, and you just know that some collectors will need all of them.

CD’s don’t have that luxury to drive sales, for CD buyers it’s not about silly splattered
discs, it’s just about the music, man.

 

In the late '80s, Warner released a series of CDs that were gold coloured (ordinary silver CDs were in print at the time).

Of course, some of us have lots of silly splattered CDs.

 

Same here; never stopped. Not sure if you needed to be quick though. There were plenty instances of new LPs staying on the shelves of Virgin and HMV in Dublin for weeks and sometimes months on end. And eventually being sold off for £3.99 or less. I remember Virgin in Dublin getting 6 copies of The Beautiful South's Blue Is The Colour in. I bought one and the other 5 sat there for months. Likewise for George Michael's Older, The Auteurs' After Murder Park, Neil Young's Dead Man, Whipping Boy's Heartworm......

 

Vinyl still sold at least 1 million per year, right?
Cassettes on the other hand, went down to like 20K in the US by the late 2000s
I hope CDs at least have a better life than cassettes